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THE WRITINGS OF LOUIS HENNEPIN, 

RECOLLECT FRANCISCAN MISSIONARY, 

BY 

> 

REV. EDWARD D. NEILL, 

u 

President of Macalester College. 



Prepared for the monthly meeting of the Department of American Historj', Minnesota 
Historical Society, on September 6, 1880, at Minneapolis. 



Louis Hennepin, a Missionary of the Recollect branch of Fran- 
ciscans attached to La Salle's expedition to the Illinois river, has 
for two centuries borne an unenviable reputation. 

Do his writings warrant the charge against his integrity as a man 
and Christian missionary ? 

THE DESCRIPTION OF LOUISIANA, A. D. 16S3. 

The first work bearing his name was entitled, '' Description de la 
Louisiane," and in 1683 published in Paris.* 

As soon as the book appeared it was criticised. Abbe Bernou, 
on the 29th of February, 1684, writes from Rome about the " bad 
book" (meschant livre) of Father Hennepin. About a year before, the 
pious Tronson, under date of March 13, 1683, wrote to a friend : " I 
have interviewed the P. Recollect, who pretends to have descended 
the Mississippi river to the Gulf of Mexico. I do not know that one 
ivill believe icliat he speaks any more than that which is in the 
printed relation of P. Louis, which I send you that you may make 
your own reflections." Then still about a year earlier. La Salle, on 
the 22d of August, 1682, writes from Fort Frontenac, now Kings- 
ton, Canada, that Hennepin had established a character as an ex- 

*The full title is : "Description de la Louisiane, Nouvelletnent Decouverte 
au Sud 'Quest de la Nouvelle France, par ordre du Roy. 

Avec La Carte du Pays; les mcjeurs and la maniere de vivre des Sauvages. 

Dediee a sa Majeste, Par le R. P. Louis Hennepin, Missionaire Recollet & 
Notaire Apostolique. 

A Paris, Chez la veuve Sebastian Hure ; rue Saint Jacques, a I'Image S 
Jerome, pres S. Severin. M. DC. LXXXIIL Avec privilege du Roy." 



2 Hennephi's First Book. 

aggerator, that his language represented things " as he wished them 
to be, and not as they were." 

EXAGGERATIONS. 

In the dedication of his book to Louis the Fourteenth, he 
writes : " We have given the name of Louisiana to this great dis- 
covery." Documents, however, prepared before the book was 
printed, call the region '"Louisiana." 

Hennepin describes animals caught in the current, and forced 
over Niagara Falls " more than six hundred feet in lieight^ 

The brave Henry Tonty, who was also a member of La Salle's 
expedition, in a letter written from Quebec, A. D. 1684, estimates 
the Falls to be " one hundred and fifty feet in height,'" and was near 
the truth. 

Some years ago, the writer of this review visited the ruins of the 
ancient churches of the seventh century, at Glendalough, in County 
Wicklow, Ireland, and a female guide there told some marvellous 
stories. Being asked if she always spoke the truth, her reply was, 
''I do, but I magnify the truth to please visitors." Hennepin, like 
the old woman, loved to "magnify the truth." 

On the map accompanying his first book, he boldly marks a Rec- 
ollect Mission many miles north of the point he had visited. In 
the Utrecht edition of 1697 this deliberate fraud is erased. 



PLAGIARISM. 

His first work, upon examination, seems to be a compilation from 
the writings of others, with the interjection of exaggerations. 

A comparison of the " Official Relation of La Salle's voyage from 
1679 to 1681,"' with the " Description of Louisiana," shows a re- 
markable similarity of language. For instance, examine the de- 
scription, in each, of Lake Superior or Conde, and Lake Illinois or 
Dauphin, now Michigan. 



Belation of La Salle's Voyage, 
1619-81. 

" Le lac Superieur et celuy cles Illi- 
nois sont les plus esloignez du coste 
du couchant. Le premier, qui s'est- 
end de Test al'ouest, a cent cinquante 
lieues de longeur, soixante de largeur 
et environ pres de cmq cents lieues de 

tour. 

Le Second, qui est situe' au nord et 
au sud, a cent vingt ou cent trente 
lieues de longueur quarante ou cin- 
quante de largeur et pres de quatre 
cents lieues de tour." 



Hoinepin's Description, 1683. 

' ' Le Lac de Conde et le Lac Dau- 
phin sont les plus eloignez du coste 
du couchant, le premier qui s'estend 
de Test a I'ouest a cent cinquante 
lieues de longeur et environ cinq cens 
lieues de tour : 

Le second qui est scitue au Nord et 
Sud a cent vingt ou cent trente de 
longeur, et quarante a cinquante 
lieues de largeur, et pres de quatre 
cents lieuesde tour." 



L.^<^ ¥9L/ 



Michel AccauU, Leader. 



Several pages could be given, but we have only space for a few 
more resemblances. 

In the account prepared of La Salle's voyage, is a narrative of 
his travels in the Valley of the Illinois River in January, I68O1 
which is used by Hennepin in the Description of Louisiana with a 
remarkable change of one word. The Memoir of La Salle's voyage 
alludes to " pirogues " canoes made by hollowing logs, but Hennepin 
changes the word in his Description to '' perroquets," the French 
for parrots. In the Utrecht edition, however, he omits all the 
sentences quoted. 



Relation of La Salle's Voijaqe. 

Sur la fin du quatriesme jour, en 
traversant un petit lac que forme la 
riviere, on remarqua des fumees qui 
firent connoistre que les Sauvages 
estoient cabanez pres de la. En eftet, 
le cinquiesme, sur les neuf heures du 
matin, on vit des duex costes de la 
riviere quantite de pirogues, et envi- 
lon quatre vingts cabanes pleines de 
Sauvages qu' n'aperceurentlescanots 
(ju'apres quils eurent double nine 
pointe derriere laquelie les Illinois 
estoient cabanez a demi-portee de 
lusil." 



Hennepin s Description. 
" Sur la fin du quatrieme jour en- 
traversant un petit lac qui forme la 
riviere, on remarqua des fumees qui 
firent connoistre que les Sauvages 
estoient cabannez prez de la. PJn 
eftet le cinquiesme sur les neu^ heures 
du matin on vit des deux cotez de la 
Riviere quantite de Peroquets et en- 
viron quartre vingts cabannes pleines 
de Sauvages qui n'apperceurent nos 
Canots qu' apres que j/ouscumes dou- 
ble une pointe derripre_-U-tiieIle les 
Illinois estoient campez a deinie por- 
tee du fusil. 



La Salle, on the 22d of August, 1682, wrote from Fort Frontenac, 
in which letter he disparaged his rival, Du Luth, and gave an ac- 
count of the expedition of Michel Accault and Hennepin to Mille 
Lacs, in Minnesota. 

Hennepin has also used the words of this account in many places 
of his " Discovery of Louisiana/' while in some particulars he varies, 
and enlarges with narratives of his own exploits. 

La Salle, in 1682, writes that on the 11th of April, 1680, about 
three o'clock in the afternoon, Accault and Hennepin were met on 
the Mississippi by one hundred Nadouesioux, who were on a war 
party against the Tchatchakigoua. 

Hennepin writes in 1683, that it was about two o'clock, and that 
there were one hundred and twenty Indians on a war party against 
the Miamis, Illinois and Maroa. 

La Salle writes, that " Michel Accault, ivho ivas the leader, pre- 
sented them with the calumet." 

Hennepin writes, " These savages, leaping from their canoes, some 
on to the land, and others in the water with cries and dreadful yells, 
approached us, and as we made no resistance, being but three, one 
snatched our calumet." 



4 Hennepin' s Second Book. 

La Salle writes, "Upon landing, Michel Accault presented them 
with twenty knives, and a fathom and a half of tobacco, which 
they accepted." 

'Hennepin writes, " This forced me, with one of my men, leaving 
the other by our baggage, to go to their war chiefs and to scatter 
among them six axes, five knives, and six lathoms of our black to- 
bacco, and bending my head 1 showed them with an axe that they 
might kill us if they desired." 

La Salle writes, " Being about eight leagues below the Falls of 
Saint Anthony, they resolved to go by land to the village situated 
about sixty leagues from the place of landing. They did not wish 
to carry the goods of our people nor to go by water." 

Hennepin writes, " Having arrived on the nineteenth day of our 
navigation, five leagues below Falls of St. Anthony, these Indians 
landed us in a bay." 

Hennepin was chagrined at the cold reception accorded to his 
" Description of Louisiana," as indicated by the following letter 
directed to Abbe Renaudot, " at his house in Paris :" 

" You know that I gave to you the first intelligence ot our dis- 
covery, at my arrival, and made you the judge of the troubles which 
I have endured these four years. Nevertheless I perceive that M. 
I'Abbe Bernou does not use it, as he ought, out of regard to me." 

He signs this letter "F. Louis Hennepin, pauvre esclave des bur- 
bars." 

If it is true, as Margry supposes, that Abbe Bernou wrote the ofii- 
cial history of La Salle's voyage, from which we have quoted, it is 
not strange that he should have treated Hennepin with but little 
respect. 

"nouvelle decouvekte," a. d. 1697. 

The second work of Hennepin, an enlargement of the first, ap- 
peared at Utrecht in the year 1697, ten years after La Sailers death.* 

During the interval between the publication of the first and sec- 
ond book, he had passed three years as Superintendent of the Rec- 
ollects at Reny, in the province of Artois, when Father Hyacinth 
Letevre, a friend of La Salle, and Commissary Provincial of Rec- 
ollects at Paris, wished him to return to Canada. He refused, and 

* Its full title reads : " Nouvelle Decouverte cVun tres Grand Pays, situe dans 
TAmenque, entre le Nouveau Mexique, et la Mer Glaciale, Avec les cartes et les 
figures necessaires et de plus THistoire Naturelle et Morale, et les avantages 
qu' on en peut tirer par Tetablissement des colonies. 

Le tout dedie a La Majeste Britannique Guillaume 111 par le R. P. Louis 
Hennepin, Missionaire Recollect et Notaire Apostolique. A Utrecht — Chez 
Guillaume Broedelet, Marchand Libraire. MDCXCVIL 



Incidents of Hennepin's Life. 5 

was ordered to go to Rome, and upon his coming back was sent to 
a convent at St. Omer, and there received a dispatch from the 
Minister of State in France to return to the countries of the King 
oi Spain, of which he was a subject. This order he asserts, he 
afterwards learned, was forged. 

In the Preface to the English edition of the New Discovery, 
published in 1698, in London, he writes : 

" The pretended reasons of that violent order was, because I re- 
fused to return into America where I had been already eleven years, 
though the particular laws of our Order oblige none of us to go 
beyond sea, against his will. 

I would have, however, returned very willingly had I not sufl&- 
ciently known the malice of Mr. La Salle, who would have exposed 
me, to make me perish, as he did one of the men who accompanied 
me in my Discovery. God knows that I am sorry for his unfortu- 
nate death, but the judgments of the Almighty are always just, for 
the gentleman was killed by one of his own men, who were at last 
sen&ible that he exposed them to visible dangers, without any neces- 
sity, and for his private designs." 

After this he was for about five years at Gosselies, in Brabant, as 
Confessor in a convent, and from thence removed to his native 
place, Ath, in Belgium, where, according to his narrative in the 
preface to the " Nouveau Decouverte," he was again persecuted. 
Then Father Payez, Grand Commissary of Recollects at Louvain, 
being informed that the King of Spain and the Elector of Bavaria 
recommended the step, consented that he should enter the service 
of William the Third of Great Britain, who had been very kind to 
the Roman Catholics of Netherlands. 

By order of Payez he was sent to Antwerp to take the lay habit 
in the convent there, and subsequently went to Utrecht, where he 
finished his second book known as the New Discovery. 

His first volume, printed in 1683, contains 312 pages, with an 
appendix of 107 pages, on the Customs of the Savages, while the 
Utrecht book of 16y7 contains 501> pages, without an appendix. 

In the first chapter of this work Hennepin writes that on his way 
to Canada, near Rochelle, he acted as Curate, '' being invited so to 
do by the Pastor of the place who had occasion to be absent from 
his charge." 

Some have thought that no one who was a priest of the Church 
of Rome* would have used the word " pasteur," but these forget 

* At the celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of the discovery of the 
Falls of Saint Anthony by Michel Ako and other Europeans, held at Minneapo- 
lis, on July 8d. 1880, Bishop Ireland, of the Roman Catholic Church, made the 
following remarks : 

' ' John Gilmary Shea, some years ago, wrote on Hennepin and wrote very bit- 



6 Francis de Salignac Fenelon. 

t,hat in the days of Archbishop Fenelon, who lived at this period, 
a priest of the Church of Rome was sometimes called a pasteur. 

Id this chapter there is a sentence which however needs correc- 
tion. It alleges that while Hennepin was in Canada "Abbe Fene- 
lon, present Archbishop of Cambray, resided there/' 

It is true that Francis de Salignac de la Motte Fenelon was a priest 
in Canada Avhen Hennepin was there, but with the same name he 
was only the half-brother of Francis de Salignac de la Motte Fen- 
elon, the celebrated Archbishop of Cambray. 

On page 249 of the " New Discovery " he begins an account of a 
voyage alleged to have been made to the mouth of the Mississippi, 
and occupies over sixty pages in the narrative.* 

The opening sentences give as a reason for concealing to this 
time his discovery, that La Salle would have reported him to his 
Superiors for presuming to go down instead of ascending the stream 
toward the north as had been agreed, and that the two with him, 
threatened that if he did not consent to descend the river, they would 
leave him on shore during the night, and pursue their own course. 

terly about him, stating that he could not be pub forth as a truthful historian. 
On later and more careful examination Shea has changed his opinion. His book 
will be before the public in a few weeks, and will present in full his line of ar- 
guments. He has compared one with the other two volumes, the volume written 
at Paris and the one at Utrecht. The style is different. The Utrecht embraces 
all that was said in the first edition with additions, the object of which additions 
seems to have been to brmg the volume up to date. Errors occur, blunders of 
which Hennepin could not be supposed capable ; blunders in the wording of 
things relating to the Catholic Church, which shows that the compiler of the 
second volume could not even have been a Catholic. For instance. Catholic 
priests — who in the French are always .set down as c?fre.s — are called pasteurs, 
while the -woxA. pasteur in the French language essentially indicates a Protestant 
minister.'' 

* Bishop Ireland has fallen into a singular error in speaking of the Utrecht 
volume. He says : 

" The volume is numbered to page 313, then these ten pages, differing in type, 
in the spacing of the lines, from the balance of the book, are all inserted in the 
volume under the same paging with a star after the number of the page (313*) 
showing plainly that these ten pages were added to the book after it had come 
forth from the hands of the printer. 

They contained the so called voyage on the lower Mississippi, and were an in- 
terpolation in the volume after it had been issued from the press. 

Now what is the conclusion of all this ? Simply that it cannot be proved that 
Father Hennepin was ever the author or publisher of this Utrecht volume." 

The Bishop never would have made these remarks if he had seen the Utrecht 
volume. The pages to which he alludes contain not a sentence about the lower 
Mississippi, and are a simple reprint of what had already appeared in the Descrip- 
tion of 1683 published at Paris. 



Alleged Voyage. 7 

He asserts that he left the Gulf" of Mexico to return on the 1st 
of April, and on the 24th left the Arkansas, but a week after this 
he declares that he landed with the Sioux* at the marsh about two 
miles below the city of Saint Paul. 

The account has been and is still a puzzle to the historical student. 
In our review of his first book we have noticed that as early as 1683 
he claimed to have descended the Mississippi. In the Utrecht pub- 
lication he declares that while at Quebec, upon his return to France, 
he gave to Father Valentine Roux, Couimissary of Recollects, his 
journal, upon the promise that it would be kept secret, and that 
this Father made a copy of his whole voyage, including the visit to 
the Gulf of Mexico, but in his Description of Louisiana, Hennepin 
wrote : " We had some design of going to the mouth of the river 
Colbert, which more probably empties into the Gulf of Mexico than 
into the Red Sea, but the tribes that seized us gave us no time to 
sail up and down the river," 

DU LUTH AND HENNEPIN. 

The additions in the Utrecht book to magnify his importance and 
detract from others, are many. As Sparks and Parkman have 
pointed out the plagiarisms of this edition, a reference here is un- 
necessary. 

Du Luth, who left Quebec in 1678, and had been in northern Min- 
nesota with an interpreter for a year, after he met Ako and Hennepin, 
becomes of secondary importance, in the eyes of the Franciscan. 

In the Description of Louisiana, on page 289, Hennepin speaks 
of passing the Falls of Saint Anthony upon his return to Canada 
in these few words : " Two of our men seized two beaver robes at 
the Falls of St. Anthony of Padua, which the Indians had in sac- 
rifice, fastened to trees." 

But in the Utrecht edition, commencing on page 416, there is 
much added concerning Du Luth. After using the language of the 
edition of 1683, already quoted, it adds : '' Hereupon there arose a 
dispute between the Sieur du Luth and myself. I commended what 
they had done, saying, ' The savages might judge by it that they 
disliked the superstition of these people." 

'' The Sieur du Luth, on the contrary, said that they ought to have 
left the robes where the savages placed them, for they would not 
fail to avenge the insult we had put upon them by this action, and 
that it was to be feared that they Avould attack us on the journey. 

'' I confessed he had some foundation for what he said, and that he 
spoke according to the rules of prudence. But one of the two men 

* Page 339. 



8 Dh Luth and Hennepin. 

flatly replied that the two robes suited them, and they cared noth- 
ing for the savages and their superstitions. 

" The Sieur du Luth, at these words, was so greatly enraged that 
he nearly struck the one who uttered them, but I intervened and 
settled the dispute. The Picard and Michel Ako ranged themselves 
on the side of those who had taken the robes in question, which 
might have resulted badly. 

" I argued with Sieur du Luth that the savages would not attac^ 
us, because I was persuaded that their great chief Ouasicoude would 
have our interests at heart, and he had great credit with his 
nation. The matter terminated pleasantly. 

" When we arrived near the River Ouisconsin, we halted to smoke 
the meat of the buffalo we had killed on the journey. During our 
stay, three savages of the nation we had left came by the side of 
our canoe to tell us that their great chief Ouasicoude, having 
learned that another chief of these people wished to pursue and 
kill us, entered the cabin where he was consulting, and had struck 
him on the head with such violence as to scatter his brains upon 
his associates, thus preventing the executing of this injurious project. 

'' We regaled the three savages, having a great abundance of food 
at that time. The Sieur du Luth, after the savages had left, was as 
enraged as before, and feared that they would pursue and attack us 
on our voyage. He would have pushed the matter further, but 
seeing that one man would resist, and was not in the humor to be 
imposed upon, he moderated, and I appeased them in the end with 
the assurance that Grod would not abandon us in distress, and pro- 
vided we confided in Him he would deliver us from our foes, be- 
cause he is the protector of men and angels." 

=1: * ^< =}: ^ >|; s(: 

After describing a conference with the Sioux, he adds : " Thus 
the savages were very kind without mentioning the beaver robes. 
The Chief Ouasicoude told me to offer a fathom of Martinico tobacco 
to the Chief Aquipaguetin, who had adopted me as a son. This had 
an admirable efi'ect upon the barbarians, who went off shouting 
several times the word Louis,* which, as he said, means the Sun, 
Without vanity, I must say that my name will be for a long time 
among these people. 

" The savages having left us to go to war against the Messorites, 
the Maroha, the Dlinois, and other nations which live toward the 

* The Sioux or Dakotahs call the Sun by a word which a Frenchmau would 
write Oui, pronounced We. 

The Dakotah Lexicon, published by th(! Smithsonian Institution, writes the 
word for Sun, Wi, pronounced We. The Moon the Sioux call the Night-Sun, 
Hanyetu Wi. 



Hennephi's Replies. 9 

lower part of the Mississippi, and are unreconcilabl? foes of the peo- 
ple of the North, the Sieur du Luth, who upon many occasions 
gave me marks of his friendship, could not forbear to tell our men 
that I had all the reason in the world to believe that the Vice Roy 
of Canada would give me a favorable reception, should we arrive 
before winter, and that he wished with all his heart that he had 
been among as many natives as myself.'' 
j^.. The style of Louis Hennepin is unmistakable in this extract, and 
it is amusing to read his patronage of one of t^^e fearless explorers 
of the Northwest, a cousin of Tonty, favored by Frontenac, and 
who was in Minnesota a year before his arrival. 

In 1691, six 3'ears before the Utrecht edition of Hennepin, another 
Recollect Franciscan had published a book at Paris called " The 
First Establishment of the Faith in New France," in which is the 
following tribute to Du Luth, whom Hennepin strives to make a 
subordinate : " In the last years of M. de Frontenac's administra- 
tion Sieur Du Luth, a man of talent and experience, opened a way 
to the missionary and the Gospel in many different nations, turning 
toward the north of that lake [Superior J where he even built a fort. 
He advanced as far as the Lake of the Issati, called Lake Buade, 
from the family name of M. de Frontenac, planting the arms of 
his Majesty in several nations on the right and left.'' 

henkefin's ''continuation." 

In the second volume of his last book, which is called '' A Con- 
tinuance of the New Discovery of a Vast Country in America," 
etc., he noticed some criticisms. 

To the objection that his work was dedicated to Willian the Third 
of Great Britain, he replies : '' My King, his most Catholic Maj- 
esty, his Electoral Highness of Bavaria, the consent in writing of 
the Superiors of my order, the integrity of my Faith, and the reg- 
ular observance of my vows which his Britannic Majesty allows 
me, are the best warrants of the uprightness of my intentions." 

To the query, how he could travel so far upon the Mississippi in 
so little time, he answers with a bold face, " That we may with a 
canoe and a pair of oars go twenty, twenty-five, or thirty leagues 
every day and more too, if there be occasion. And though we had 
gone but ten leagues a day, yet in thirty days we might easil" have 
gone three hundred leagues. If during the time we spent from the 
River of the Illinois to the mouth of the Meschasipi, in the Gulf 
of Mexico, we had used a little more haste we might have gone the 
same twice over." 

To the objection that he said that he had passed eleven years 
in America, when he had been there but about four, he evas- 




10 D''Iherv'dle's Opinion. 



ively replies, that "reckoning from the year 1674, when I first 
set out, to the ye?r 1688, when I printed the second edition of my 
Louisiana, it appears that I have spent fifteen years either in trav- 
els or printing my Discoveries." 

To those who ohjected to the statement in his first l)Ook in the 
dedication to Louis the Fourteenth, that the Sioux always call the 
Sun, Louis, he writes : " I repeat what I have said before, that 
being among the Issati and Nadouessaus, by whom I was made a 
slave in America, I never heard them call the Sun any other than 
Louis. It is true, these savages call also the Moon, Louis, but with 
this distinction, that they give the Moon the name of Louis Bas- 
atche, which in their language signifies the Sun that shines in the 
night." 

The Utrecht edition of 1697 called forth much censure, and no 
one in France doubted that Hennepin was the author. D'Iberville, 
Governor of Louisiana, while in Paris, wrote, on July 3d, 1699, to 
the Minister of Marine and Colonies of France, in these words : 
"Yery much vexed at the Recollect whose false narratives had de- 
ceived every one, and caused our siiffering and total failure of our 
enterprise by the time consumed in the search of things which 
alone existed in his imagination." 

Recent doubts can never shear of him of his reputation as the 
author of the " Nouvelle Decouverte," and nothing has been discov- 
ered to change the verdict of two centuries, that Louis Hennepin, 
Recollect Franciscan, was deficient in Christian manhood. 






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